The Viennese Girl

by Jenny Lecoat

  She let out a strange little moan then slid down the wall until she was crouched on the floor, sobbing into her hands. Rainwater from her coat and hair pooled around her on the linoleum.

  Hedy crouched down beside her and put an arm around her. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘No, it’s not all right. It’s happening all over,’ Dorothea wailed. ‘Everyone’s so hungry and angry! There’s nothing in any of the shops, and we can’t even forage for limpets and winkles till the next low tide, and then everyone else will be doing the same.’

  ‘What about your cousin?’ Hedy bit her lip. They both knew it was a stupid pointless question, but Dorothea pretended it was reasonable.

  ‘The Germans are taking everything from the farms. I doubt he could feed his own children, never mind us.’ Words failed her for a while, crushed by the weight of her misery, then she took a deep breath. ‘I’m so stupid. You know, when Kurt said back in June that the Allies might not come for us, I didn’t believe him. I pretended I did, but I was sure they’d come. My mother always loved King George – we always stood for the national anthem – but I never thought he’d let this happen. I thought they would send a ship, something …’

  Hedy hugged her close. ‘If they had, the Germans would have fought back – it would have been a bloodbath. We might all be dead now.’

  ‘Perhaps that would be better!’ In the darkness of the hallway, her pale skin was almost translucent, and Hedy could clearly see the blue veins beneath the surface. ‘Perhaps it’s better to die quickly, fighting, than to sit around helpless, waiting for it.’

  ‘But we’re still here.’ Hedy drew her closer. ‘We’ve survived so long, Dory, against the worst odds. We’ve fought back in the only way we could. We can’t give up now.’

  Dorothea was still crying, but it was a different kind of weeping now, quiet, resigned. ‘I’m not sure I have the strength, Hedy. I’m so tired, and everything hurts all the time. Sometimes’ – she wiped a dollop of snot from her nose – ‘sometimes I wish I’d just have an asthma attack in the night and not wake up.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Hedy heard her voice, shrill and desperate. ‘I need you, and so will Anton. We just have to hang on. Kurt will always bring us whatever he can. And it can’t be much longer. It just can’t.’

  Dorothea shook her head. ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘I know! Belgium is liberated now. The Americans are already crossing parts of the Rhine. The Allies will win, Dory, everyone knows it. We just have to get through the next few’ – she couldn’t bring herself to say months, though that was what she was thinking – ‘weeks.’

  ‘I’m just so tired. So, so tired.’

  Hedy pressed her face against Dorothea’s downturned head and closed her eyes. The rainwater on the floor was soaking up through the hem of her dress, adding a new layer of cold, but she took no notice. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do, but sit there, rocking gently on the hall floor, watching their own breath steam in the cold air, and listening to the relentless tick-tick-tick of the kitchen clock.

  12

  1945

  Evening Post

  8th May, 1945

  I appeal to you to maintain your calm and dignity in the hours that lie ahead, and to refrain from all forms of demonstration.

  …

  I feel that the conclusion of the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon will be the appropriate moment for the hoisting of flags, and I make the strongest appeal to you, in the interests of public order, not to fly flags before that time.

  I was present last evening at the release from custody of the majority of political prisoners, and I am doing all in my power to obtain the immediate release of the remainder of them.

  I shall make known to you immediately any further developments.

  A. M. Coutanche, Bailiff

  This was a new smell, Kurt thought, as he shuffled into the main hall of College House with the other officers. Not the usual mixed scents of damp uniforms, body odour and leather. Not even the stink of fear that had pervaded in the early days of the land invasion. He couldn’t place it at first, but the answer lay in the expressions on his colleagues’ faces, the dejected slope of their shoulders, and especially in the undisguised curses and questions skimming through the room. Questions no longer muttered in corners or the silent corridors of officers’ clubs, but spat forcefully with rage and resentment. It was defeat.

  He gazed through the same leaded window he had looked through so often before, struck by the precious blue sky and bouncing white clouds, and mentally repeated some phrases on a loop, trying to make the news real to himself. It was all over. Hitler was dead, Germany was finished, the great dream of the Fatherland was no more. Millions of lives lost or wrecked, all for the fever dream of a nation too consumed with fury and ideology to see its own reflection. All for a mirage. All for nothing. Kurt tried to figure out what he was feeling, but all he could identify was a sense of relief.

  The day of reckoning was no longer a possibility somewhere in the future. Within days – perhaps hours – British troops would be landing on these shores, and every man in this room would be going to jail. Some of them would be put to death. With a strange detachment, Kurt wondered if he would be one of them. How tragic, he thought, to have survived this long, to have kept alive the woman he loved, only to be snatched from the earth now, when happiness was finally possible. But he felt no fear or self-pity, just an eerie calmness. Nothing was any longer within his control – all his responsibilities were in the past. Perhaps that was part of the odd aroma in this room today – the passive pleasure of release from duty. The future was out of their hands.

  Baron von Aufsess, standing on a desk at the end of the room, spoke in a confident voice as if dispatching notices for any normal day. ‘I have been informed,’ he said, ‘that Mr Churchill will address the British nation via the BBC at three o’clock this afternoon. I have received orders that we are to prevent the public from hearing any such illegal broadcast …’ He hesitated here, and gave a little cough that seemed to Kurt more about punctuation than clearing his throat. ‘However, as we also have it on good authority that British naval ships are already on their way to the islands carrying orders for our immediate surrender, I have given permission for the broadcast to be available to any of the local population in possession of a wireless.’ A soft murmur went quickly around the room. Everyone knew that at least half the locals on the island either had their original radios or an illegal crystal set. ‘Meanwhile,’ von Aufsess continued, ‘you will be aware that I will be speaking with the Bailiff today regarding the release of ration stores, and that the Bailiff has urged the islanders to act with restraint, and not get any foolish ideas of retribution.’

  Kurt grimaced, on the edge of laughter. Even now, they couldn’t shake off that underlying assumption of superiority! What a shock the coming days would be.

  The baron dismissed his officers, and minions passed around instructions on hastily handwritten cards. Kurt skim-read his orders and tucked them into his breast pocket. Moving slowly through the crush towards the door, he managed a quick glance at some of the other orders handed out. Remove … destroy … dismantle. It was clear that the Area Command’s priority now was an island-wide concealment of what had been going on here for the last five years. Mountains of paperwork, private German food stores, anything that could be viewed by the Allies as contrary to the Hague Convention. Kurt buttoned his tunic and set off from College House with the rest, but instead of heading to the compound to bonfire stock lists as instructed, he turned at the bottom of the hill and headed for West Park Avenue. To hell with them – what could they do to him now? And at this moment he needed to see Hedy more than anything.

  The streets were buzzing with locals, many of whom had clearly abandoned work for the day. Some grinned at him as he passed, filled with vengeful glee. Others shouted insults. Several women had gathered to watch four German privates desperately whitewashing over the giant red cross that
had been painted on the wall of the officers’ club nine months earlier, in a desperate attempt to save it from bombing. The whitewash turned the cross pink, but its outline remained stubbornly visible, to the growing panic of the paint-spattered soldiers. Kurt snorted at the pertinence of the image. Not enough whitewash in the world, he thought to himself.

  In defiance of the appeal, many Union Jacks and Jersey flags were already being openly displayed in private windows. They had appeared from nowhere, after years stashed away in attics and cellars, or hidden in the storage rooms of shops. Crossing Val Plaisant, he spotted a beaming old gentleman placing speakers on his windowsill, ready to broadcast further news to all and sundry that afternoon. Kurt felt the man’s joy and couldn’t help smiling. It felt strange to be surrounded by so much happiness and to know that your own demise was the cause of it.

  At Dorothea’s house, he tapped his usual coded knock and was quickly shown inside. Dorothea was resplendent in the dress she had worn for her wedding but rarely worn since. Hedy was wearing the grey floral cotton frock and ancient cardigan she had been in most days for the last eighteen months, but Kurt’s heart dissolved when he looked at her. There was a gleam in her eye he hadn’t seen in months, and the featheriness of her movements as she skipped around the house reminded him of illustrations in fairy stories. Her hair, though still not back to its original length, was now curling around her jawline, its rich tawny colour as beguiling as ever.

  ‘We had a whole tin of salmon between us for dinner last night!’ Hedy bubbled. ‘It was the last thing left in the April Red Cross box, but apparently the British ships are bringing relief parcels, so we decided to give ourselves a treat!’

  ‘Quite right too.’ Kurt reached out and touched that hair, marvelling at its softness. ‘Do you have somewhere to listen to the speech at three o’clock?’

  ‘Dory fetched the wireless back from her grandmother’s house. She walked right by a German soldier at the top of the road, pushing it in the wheelbarrow, and he didn’t even ask to look under the blanket! That’s when we knew, when we really understood that it was all over.’

  He wound her tresses around his fingers. ‘The British boats will be here tomorrow. You should go down to the harbour to greet the Tommies – it’ll be a quite a day.’

  ‘Come with us?’ Dorothea suggested, peering at her reflection in the mirror of her empty powder compact.

  Kurt glanced towards Hedy. The look between them said everything.

  ‘I think I may be required elsewhere.’

  Hedy took his hand from her hair and led him into the privacy of the front room. ‘I’ve got a plan. As soon as I’m certain it’s safe, I’m going to go to the Jersey States offices to tell them everything. I’m going to tell them about you, and how you helped me.’

  Kurt tried to look pleased and grateful. ‘Well, I appreciate that—’

  ‘I’m sure that the British will have to round you all up initially. But they can’t treat you all the same. They’ll want to identify the leaders. But I’m living proof that you’re in a different category.’

  ‘Hedy, I’m an officer.’ He tried to speak gently. ‘That has certain implications.’

  ‘At first, yes, but the British judicial system is very fair. Once they know the whole story, I’m certain they’ll make exceptions. I mean, they might decide not to imprison you at all.’

  Unwilling to snatch this moment from her, Kurt indulged himself, falling into those sea-green eyes one more time. As sunlight poured in from the window, bathing them both, he pulled her towards him and held her, relishing the warmth of her body, the softness of her breasts through his tunic, the security of those skinny arms around his neck. Then he kissed her, long and deep, and took a deep sniff of her neck, breathing in the natural perfume of her skin. Finally, he pulled back and forced a beaming smile.

  ‘I need to go, sweetheart. I have so much to do. Enjoy Churchill’s speech.’ And with that, he set off towards the east and his billet.

  Hedy and Dorothea gazed at the crowds around the harbour in astonishment. The shouting, singing and cheering seemed to fill the sky. Like a giant, chaotic whirlpool of humanity, eddies and swirls of faces circled in different directions, all trying to reach the next vantage point, or reach a friend lost in the melee. The greatest surge of people was on the West Park side, where streams of British soldiers were now pouring off the troop carriers in the bay and trudging their slow, shambolic path through the thousands of well-wishers. Old farmers stretched out their arms to shake hands with them, women young and old threw themselves at the newcomers, showering them with kisses. Eager fingers reached across every gap, begging for the cigarettes and sweets in every soldier’s pocket.

  Hedy’s eyes darted from one extraordinary sight to another. ‘Look, Dory – the hotel!’

  The Pomme d’Or, home of the German Naval headquarters for the duration of the war, was now filled with British uniforms, military men brimming over its front balcony. The raising of the Union Jack from its flagpole drew another roar from the crowd, and a spontaneous chorus of ‘God Save The King’ burst out and spread right down to the quayside. Everywhere she looked, Hedy saw faces creased with emotion – women cuddling children, husbands kissing wives, old men wiping tears of joy.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Dorothea’s voice was high and bright, but when Hedy turned to her she saw only a fixed mask of theatrical joy. She knew that her own face projected the same lie. In fact she was finding the whole experience terrifying. The closeness of strangers pressed against her, the dozens of unknown hands touching her arms and back – it felt revolting. Less like celebration, more like defilement. Her breath was coming in uneven bursts, and she wondered how Dorothea’s asthma would fare with the emotion of the day.

  At that moment, as if conjured by her own thoughts, she spotted a familiar figure on the far side of the Weighbridge, a man in an old brown mackintosh being carried along by a river of people towards the landing area. As Hedy looked towards him, Oliver Maine turned his head and miraculously caught sight of her, immediately taking the hat from his head and waving frantically in affection and triumph. Hedy waved back, gesticulating that to try and reach him now would be hopeless, and the doctor laughed in agreement before disappearing into the crowd. Hedy felt her heart swell, and promised herself that her first visit when this madness was over would be to the hospital. Perhaps, she considered, in a week or two she might be able to get hold of a few eggs and a little sugar. If so, she would make him an apple cake to take home for his wife.

  Hedy realised that Dorothea was pulling her by the arm.

  ‘There’s two soldiers over there. I want to find out what they know about the war in Europe.’

  ‘What do you mean? Know what?’

  But Dorothea was already pulling her towards two young Tommies, shouting at them for attention. As they reached the men Dorothea reached out and grabbed one of them by the arm. He was little more than twenty, pasty-faced and chubby by island standards. Dorothea pressed her face close to his. ‘Could I ask you something? I’m trying to get news of my husband. Last I heard he was fighting in East Prussia. Don’t suppose you know what happened to the soldiers out there?’

  The Tommy looked at her with confusion. Hedy pulled at her dress, but Dorothea’s eyes were fixed on the young man and she refused to budge.

  ‘No Brits out there, love. Ruskies pushed Jerry back over that side. Which regiment was your old man with?’

  Again, Hedy pulled; again Dorothea resisted.

  ‘He’s Austrian, he was forced to fight with the Germans. Do you know if the Russians took many prisoners? How do I find out if he’s alive?’

  The Tommy was now backing away from them, as was his friend. ‘Your husband fought for the Jerries?’

  ‘He didn’t want to, he was conscripted. I just wondered if you could tell me how to find out what happened to him?’

  ‘Dory,’ Hedy muttered, ‘let’s go. This isn’t the right time.’

  Hearing Hed
y’s voice, the Tommy whipped round to look at her. ‘Here, that accent! You a Jerry too?’

  ‘No, I’m not German.’ Hedy felt her heart bang in her chest. ‘I’m … I’ve been …’

  The Tommies looked them both up and down, then pushed onwards through the crowd.

  Hedy watched their uniforms disappear into the throng, then turned to a deflated Dorothea. ‘It’s just not the right day, Dory. Those men aren’t from here, they don’t understand. Why don’t we go up to Fort Regent? That must be where they’re going to hoist the Union Jack.’

  But Dorothea was no longer looking at Hedy, or at the departing soldiers. Her eyes were focused on a fast-moving rabble on the Esplanade side of the crowd. A pack of half a dozen men, young and in shirtsleeves, was moving at speed, running as fast as the crowd allowed, apparently chasing something or someone. The rumble of their collective feet parted the hordes, and as a space appeared, the object of their pursuit suddenly became visible. For a moment Hedy thought it was a youth wearing some kind of pale, tight-fitting overall, then to her horror she realised that it was actually a young girl. Her hair had been roughly cut down to the skull and she was entirely naked. The girl was running as fast as she could in desperation to escape her pursuers, and her intermittent squeals of terror carried across the heads of the throng, causing everyone to turn and stare. A second later, the girl escaped up a side street and two of her hunters were stopped by a local policeman.

  Hedy turned to look at Dorothea, whose face was now completely colourless.

  ‘Oh my God, Hedy … was that what I think it is?’

  Hedy scrabbled for words, but found none. She nodded.

  ‘Is this what it’s going to be like? Is this how they’re going to treat us? What was it all for?’

  Hedy took Dorothea’s hand in her own. ‘Come on. Let’s get down to the collection depot, pick up our Red Cross parcels. Then we’ll just go home.’